JAPAN: Tokyo Mulls Freeze of Aid to India After Nuclear Testing

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakichi

TOKYO, May 13 1998 (IPS) - Shocked and angered by India’s nuclear testing, Japan is contemplating economic sanctions on one of its biggest aid recipients.

“Japan will review its economic assistance to India,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Keizo Obuchi told the Special Committee on Security of the House of Representatives. He said the nuclear testing runs against Japan’s principles of official development.

Japan has been India’s largest aid donor since 1986. An official at the Foreign Ministry told journalists that “some measures” would have to be taken in connection with Japan’s economic assistance to India. These could include partially freezing loans that Japan had pledged in fiscal 1997.

Japan has provided India 3.5 billion yen in grant-in-aid in fiscal 1997 which ended March 31 1998, but it has not yet disbursed 132.7 billion yen in loans for fiscal 1997.

India’s announcement that it had conducted three underground nuclear tests on Monday has drawn condemnation from neighbour and arch-rival Pakistan, which said it would take appropriate action and the United States, which was also considering military and economic sanctions on the South Asian giant.

The surprise testing raised fears of heightened tension and the spectre of an arms race in the region.

Japanese leaders and survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings reacted with shock and anger to the reports. Calling the tests a terrible shock and an “outrage that ravages the wishes of victims and citizens”, Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito said he would lodge a “strong protest” with the Indian government.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima suffered U.S. bombing at the end of World War 11 and the issue of nuclear weapons remains sensitive in Japan.

Japan temporarily froze grant-aid to China in 1995 when the country conducted nuclear testing. Tokyo resumed the low-credit yen loans after Beijing signed the CTBT in September 1996.

Analysts say Tokyo could decide on a partial suspension of the loans to New Delhi as a form of protest. Japanese policy stipulates that the country’s overseas assistance spending, the largest in the world, should be cut to recipient nations that are arms exporters or with high military budgets.

Defense analysts say India’s decision to carry out the test, after a lapse of 24 years, has been slap in the face of Japan which has taken a high profile stance in urging the South Asian giant to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

India has refused to be signatory arguing that the NPT is discriminatory as it allows the rich countries, such as the United States, Britain and France and even China to have nuclear weapons.

China, which borders India in the northeast, called the nuclear blasts a “step backward” for the cause of disarmament.

The test is particularly irksome to Japanese leaders because it comes against the backdrop of the success of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty when the nuclear countries including the United States joined in 1996.

Japan, defeated by the Allied Forces ending World War ll in 1945, has pledged its support to NPT and to work for a nuclear weapon free world. Japanese leaders have urged India and Pakistan, which is also believed to have nuclear weapons capability, to join the NPT.

Japanese pressure, however, hardly changed the policy in both countries and the issue remains a lingering thorn in bilateral relations. A senior Foreign Ministry official remarked that “it will be a long-term matter” but Tokyo intends to step up pressure after the latest test.

Kazuhiko Ogawa, a defense specialist, says the test in India can be seen as a statement against China and other nuclear powers and has proved India’s high level nuclear capabilities.

“India will join the CTBT now that it has proved to other countries, especially China and Pakistan, that it is a major military power,” he says. Analysts, however, says the test carries some weight in Japan which is faced with a nuclear threat from North Korea.

North Korea, suspected of developing its own nuclear weapons, poses a security risk for Japan. “The Indian test could carry the wrong message because it defies international opposition to nuclear testing. Pyongyang can easily use India as an excuse to go ahead with its secret nuclear missile development,” explained Naoki Usui, a defense writer.

Japanese anti-nuclear activists are also deeply disappointed with the turn of events, agitating that Japan take a firmer stance against India to force the country to stop future testing.

“We are disappointed because India chooses to ignore the horror of nuclear weapons. Japan must stop aid to India,” said Hideki Ban, of the Citizen’s Nuclear Information Centre.

Ban adds that Japan also holds the responsibility of stopping its own controversial nuclear energy program which has been criticized around the world for stocking plutonium, the deadly material used to develop nuclear weapons.

Professor Hiromichi Umebayashi, head of the Pacific Campaign for Disarmament and Security, a non-governmental organization against nuclear weapons, says Japan’s support for the United States military presence in Asia, has weakened its position in the anti- nuclear arms lobby.

“The NPT is criticized by non-nuclear countries as being discriminatory because it allows some countries to have weapons. Japan must also be a vociferous critic of the US, the largest nuclear weapons holder,” he said.

The Japanese government supports US nuclear policy on the grounds that Japan’s security depends on the US nuclear deterrent and also that Washington has pledged to not be the first to use its weapons.

But activists and other anti-nuclear groups are bitterly critical of Japan’s support, pointing out that the double standards portrayed in this policy has weakened Japan’s position in Asia.

“But at the same time we cannot accept that India continues to oppose the unfair NPT by seeking to develop its own nuclear weapons. This kind of policy is abominable,”said Umebayashi.